Category Archives: myLesley

12 Days of Learning: Assignments

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Atomic Learning has created the 12 Days of Learning, a series of articles designed to kick off resolutions to keep learning in the new year. We thought this was a great idea and have decided borrow (shamelessly steal) it and do our own. For Day 3 of our series, learn how to collect, grade and return student assignments in myLesley.

Tired of searching through your email to find the assignments your students sent? Can’t find where you filed the graded version of their final paper? The Assignment tool in myLesley will allow your students to submit their coursework to a digital dropbox-style space. You can then view, provide feedback and return the graded assignment. myLesley will keep a record in the course of when the student submitted the file, your annotations and feedback, the grade and when you returned the graded assignment to them. Your students can access their feedback at any time by returning to the myLesley course site.

Learn more about how to use this powerful tool by viewing the tutorials below. assessments menu

Create an assignment 

Grade an assignment

 

12 Days of Learning: View and Sort Discussion Threads

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Atomic Learning has created the 12 Days of Learning, a series of articles designed to kick off resolutions to keep learning in the new year. We thought this was a great idea and have decided borrow (shamelessly steal) it and do our own. For Day 2, we will look at how to sort and view discussion threads in myLesley.


The Discussion Board in myLesley (Blackboard) is one of the most used tools. It’s a great way to replicate or continue the classroom discussion online, but do you really know all the tricks to easily navigate, view and sort posts? View this short Atomic Learning video to learn how and increase you myLesley Discussion Board skills. Enter your myLesley username and password when prompted to view.

discussion thread

Fixing Broken Wiki Links

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In this week’s Agent L episode, Gremlins in the System (GITS) try to undermine student collaboration by breaking links to wikis in myLesley courses. It’s Agent L to the rescue.

BenBen Friday: Agent L, it’s a disaster. GITS agent, NeoLuddite, has broken all the links to course wikis in myLesley. Look…

Error: Broken Course Link: Item does not exist in the system. The specified object was not found.

Agent L: What does he hope to accomplish?

Ben: NeoLuddite thinks technology is going to ruin education. By corrupting links to the wikis,  he hopes to stop students from collaborating online. We can’t let him win.

neoluddite_sq

Agent L: Letting NeoLuddite win is not an option. The wiki links can be fixed.

Ben: How?

Agent L: It’s easy, Ben. We simply delete the old link to the wiki and create a new one.

Ben: But won’t that delete the wiki?!?agent L

Agent L: Not at all. The wiki is still there with all the students’ work. We just need to
recreate the link to allow them to find it again.

Ben: How do we do that?

Agent L: Simple. Let’s go into a course and I’ll show you.

First, let’s delete the bad link. Click on the small gray arrow at the end of the wiki title and select Delete from the menu.

course wiki link     deletelink

Remember, this is only deleting the link, not the wiki.

Now, we can recreate the link. go to the Tools menu and select Wikis.

Tools menu

Select Link to Wiki to choose to create a link to an existing wiki and select the name of the wiki from the list. Then click Next.

select wiki link

Add a description or instructions for you students and click Submit. That’s all there is to it.

Ben: It’s working. I can access the wiki and see everyone’s contributions. It’s all there.

Agent L: Of course. NeoLuddite can’t get the best of us. We have technology at our disposal.

 

agent LSee the complete instructions at the Agent Support Site.  

Attaching Files in the myLesley Text Editor

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In this week’s exciting Agent L episode, we outwit Gremlins in the System’s (GITS) fiendish plot to prevent faculty from sharing important course files and resources.

Ben Friday: Agent L, we have an emergency!!! GITS has struck again. The Browse My Computer button has been removed from the Insert File window in the text editor. Faculty can’t upload attachments when creating their content. How are they supposed to share files with their students.

Agent L: Calm down, Ben. Show me what you’re talking about. I’m sure we can fix this.

Ben: (takes deep breath) OK. Go to the text editor anywhere in myLesley and click on the Insert File button.  

myLesley text editor

There should be three buttons including Browse My Computer which allows faculty and students to attach files from their personal computer, but now there’s only two.

browse computer button missing

Ben: How are faculty supposed to share their syllabus or study guide or readings or…

Agent L: Wait, Ben. Stop. Let’s take a closer look. What happens if we click on the Browse Course button? Hmmm… that appears to let us look through all the files already uploaded to the course. And look, there’s an Upload option.

browse course content

Ben: What does it do?

Agent L: I think it will let us upload and attach the files we want to share. I’m going to try it.upload files menu

Look I can click on Choose File and select the file I want to attach from my computer.

choose file

After l selecting my file, I click Submit to upload it to the course.  Then click Submit again to select it as the file I want to attach. Great, now I can edit the Name of the Link to File to something more reader friendly than the file name and add Alt Text for accessibility. Click Submit one more time.

edit file display info

Agent L: Voila! I’ve done it. There’s my file.

Ben: Amazing work, Agent L. That will teach  GITS not to mess with us.

Agent L: I live to outsmart GITS.

agent LLearn more about using the myLesley text editor at the Agent Support Site.  

Creating Links in myLesley

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In today’s exciting episode, Agent L defeats Gremlins in the System’s (GITS) attempt to prevent faculty and students from creating links in myLesley.

ALvsGITS

Ben Friday: Agent L, we have an emergency! GITS is preventing faculty and students from creating links in myLesley!

Agent L: How? What’s happening?

Ben: Faculty and students are pasting links to other websites in the text editor, but they aren’t turning into links. They are just plain text… and some of the links don’t look very good either.

text editor with non-clickable link

Agent L: Hmmmm… I think I know how to fix this. myLesley’s text editor has a tool to create links. It’s called the Insert/Edit Link tool.

You simply select the text you want to be a link such as the pasted link, or if you want those long links to look nicer, type a few words to define the website you are linking to and select that text just as I’ve done below.

create a link

Then click on the Insert/Edit Link tool.

Paste your copied link into the LInk Path text box.

create link settings

For Agent Extra Credit, change the Target to Open in a New Window (_blank). Websites don’t always display well in the myLesley content frame. Opening them in a new window gives them the full browser window and all the options.

Finally click Insert. You can then finish writing your post or content in the text editor. Click Submit when you are done and you will have a nice looking clickable link. Simple.

final clickable link

BenBen: Wow, Agent L! Way to outsmart GITS!

Agent L: It’s my mission, Ben.

 

agent LLearn more about using the myLesley text editor at the Agent Support Site.